On November 25, the Brookings Institution and the Inter-American Dialogue will host Dan Erikson, Inter-American Dialogue’s senior associate for U.S. policy, for a discussion of his new book, The Cuba Wars: Fidel Castro, the United States, and the Next Revolution (Bloomsbury Press, 2008).

A distinguished panel of experts will join Erikson for a discussion of the key findings of his book, including Brookings Visiting Fellow Vicki Huddleston, former head of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, and Mark Falcoff, scholar emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute and author of Cuba the Morning After: Confronting Castro’s Legacy (AEI Press, 2003).

Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue will provide introductory remarks. Carlos Pascual, vice president and director of Foreign Policy at Brookings will moderate the discussion. After the program, the panelists will take audience questions. A reception will follow, with books available for sale.

Very few times one sees such a rational approach to Cuban issues in the USA. Though it is true, as Dan Erikson said, that mostly attention has been put to the past and the future, and not at all to the present, it would be difficult to find a way out without understanding the past. Cuban-American conflict did not begin in 1959 with Fidel Castro, the Cold War just put new gas on the charcoal fire coming from 1898. Because of prevailing of “ideologies” everything fell under the label of “democracy” and “communism”. Reality and history have already shown both “democracy” and “communism” came to use the same tools and trick and lies in foreign policy during the Cold War. In the case of Cuba and the USA the heat of the conflict and personalities involved drew both countries to the edge of stupidity and self-inflicted damages and mutilation of elemental democratic principles and values. Trying to defend from American design for dominion and “over-protection” paternalism tinted with anti-communism, Cuba went to dictatorship, centralization, and statization to the absurd, even negating the same Constitutional and democratic principles which were the excuse to go to war against Batista. And trying to drive “extracontinental” interference in the Americas, especially the “communist” adavances led by the Soviet Union and China, the USA developed a policy of permanent war against a small island thriving for independence, using the same methods which were demonoized as typical of the “evil” empire. Should America want to fix this disastrous policy it should begin to recognize the Cuban right to independence, and respect Cuban sovereignty puting an expiry date to the Non-Treaty of the Guantanamo Naval Base. Anything is possible after that. It’s true Cuban -American relations have to be special, because of a lot of reasons, but special relations are not equal to imoperial relations. There will probably be a wedding in the future, if there’s no attempt to rape or violation, because love as friendship calls for consent. So maybe Mr. Obama takes the Cuban issue out of the hands of American-Cubans who traffic with the soulf of the motherland like the merchants did at the “temple” during Jesus Christ tiemes. Jesus kicked them out of the temple, may it is time to kick them out of Cuban politics. It’s more than clear that they don’t represent the Cuban people, not in the USA and not in Cuba; and they do not represent either the basic interests of the American people. They only represent certain sectors of democrats and republicans who have a joint business with “Cuban”-Americans, especially in Miami. It would be better if they look for the way to get in real business deals, joint productive ventures, and stop trafficking with the soul of Cuba. People who cannot do themselves the job of freedom don’t have the right to represent anybody, not here in America and not in Cuba. That’s why some of them praise China while sticking to the embargo.